Fermi, the Enigma That Keeps the Lights On—and the Existential Dread Flowing by Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between a Roman metro ticket and the edge of the observable universe sits Enrico Fermi, the chain-smoking, chalk-dust-slinging physicist who managed to be both the midwife of the nuclear age and its first critic. Mention his name…
**The Global Hunger Games: How America’s Mega Millions Became the World’s Favorite Fantasy** While inflation ravages purchasing power from Lagos to Lisbon, there’s one American export that remains blissfully immune to currency fluctuations: the dream of instant, unearned wealth. The Mega Millions lottery—America’s weekly exercise in mathematical masochism—has transcended its humble origins to become a…
MOLDOVA: THE WORLD’S MOST INTERESTING FOOTNOTE TRIES TO TURN THE PAGE By Our Correspondent, currently hiding from both Russian and Romanian linguists in Chișinău Somewhere between the Carpathians and the collective international yawn, Moldova has spent three decades perfecting the art of being forgotten. Sandwiched between Ukraine’s ongoing pyrotechnics and Romania’s EU-funded smugness, this sliver…
**Riot Stock: How Wall Street Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Chaos** The world watched with mild amusement and growing horror as shares of Riot Platforms (RIOT) became the cryptocurrency world’s favorite financial yo-yo, proving once again that humanity’s capacity for speculative excess knows no borders—or apparently, any upper limit on cognitive dissonance. From…
**The Accidental Diplomat: How Precious Achiuwa Became Nigeria’s Most Effective Export Since Scam Emails** In a world where international relations have devolved into a glorified kindergarten playground—complete with name-calling, toy-throwing, and the occasional nuclear tantrum—it’s refreshing to witness diplomacy through the unlikely medium of a 6’8″ power forward who can dunk on your economy faster…
Dwight Howard Lands in Taiwan and the World Shrugs—Then Checks the Box Score By our sardonic foreign correspondent, still jet-lagged from watching civilization decline in real time Taipei—While the rest of the planet argued over grain shipments, hypersonic missiles, and whether Twitter will survive the decade, Dwight Howard—yes, that Dwight Howard—quietly signed to play for…
A Cuban-American dancer glides across a British ballroom, watched by 11 million Britons clutching their cups of tea and existential dread, while WhatsApp groups from Manila to Mexico City ping with the same question: “Who the hell is Janette Manrara, and why is my algorithm suddenly obsessed?” Welcome to the 21st-century fame centrifuge, where a…
The World’s Most Overcrowded Club: Notes on the Global Fashion of Calling Someone a “Detainee” By Our Correspondent, currently not detained (but the night is young) From the fluorescent holding pen at Charles de Gaulle to the shipping-container pop-up outside Doha, the word “detainee” has quietly become the diplomatic equivalent of a unisex hoodie: one…
The Super-Subcontinent Derby: How India vs Bangladesh Quietly Became the World’s Most Watched Proxy War by Our Man with a Visa Stamp and a Liver to Match When 1.7 billion people glance at their phones this evening, roughly the same number who claim they’ve “read the terms and conditions,” they will discover that a patch…
Eric Church’s 2024 tour—blandly christened the “Outsiders Revival” despite being bankrolled by Live Nation, Pepsi, and a constellation of hedge funds—kicked off in Nashville last month and will soon drag its coliseum-sized honky-tonk across three continents. To the casual observer it’s just another American country singer hauling 300 tons of steel truss, LED panels, and…
From the banks of the Monongahela River to the back-alleys of global anxiety, Carrick High School in Pittsburgh has become an unlikely avatar for the planet’s collective panic attack. What began as a routine lockdown in November 2023—when a student allegedly posted a “list” of classmates on social media—has now metastasized into a transcontinental case…
**Jesse Williams: The Global Aftershocks of an American Actor’s Activism** *By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from the Irony* It’s a peculiar hallmark of our times that a speech delivered at a second-tier American awards show can ricochet from Lagos living rooms to Berlin bars, sparking think-pieces in languages that don’t even share an alphabet. Yet…
